• In this short presentation we will look a few relationships between time, snow depth, and snow water equivalent (SWE) at various SNOTEL stations in Northwest Montana.

• The SNOTEL stations we’ll look at are Badger Pass, Emery Creek, and Pike Creek.

• The data we use in this presentation was scraped from this website, which aggregates snow related weather data for Northwest Montana.

• The data we use was recorded at 6AM every day from October 1, 2021 until May 31, 2022.

First we look at snow depth over time, colored by station.

Next we look at SWE over time, colored by station.

Finally we look at SWE vs snow depth, by station

• Badger pass, the station with the highest elevation, has the highest snow depth and SWE for the entire season.

• Interestingly, Emery Creek is lower in elevation, but consistently has higher SWE and snow depth than Pike Creek. This may be because of aspect or station sun exposure.

• After each station hits its max SWE, the snow becomes more settled and dense, ie the same SWE corresponds to a more shallow snow pack. This explains the “loops” in each station’s SWE vs Depth plot.